Moments
by Riptide2
Summary: "There are moments which mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same." - Anonymous. Callen's been a legend for a very long time, longer than even Hetty knows, because no one's the real thing. Some just have fewer lies to tell. A snapshot of those moments for Special Agent G. Callen, starting pre-series to the present.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** So I was minding my own business, working on my other fic Strength in My Weakness, when rabid plot bunnies attacked. This is the result, but it's also kind of unlike anything I've ever wrote before so I'd love to know what you think and if it's worth continuing! I also have to thank JaniceS who planted the seed of wanting to know more about Callen's past and his alias Yuri (used in my other fics). It's kind of a companion piece to my other stories, especially Strength in My Weakness, but I think you should be able to read and understand it without having followed them.

P.S. The information on Callen's foster brother Jason is from Season 1 ep. 6 "Keepin' It Real" and the McPhersons come from Season 5 ep. 4 "Resnikov, N.". His DEA partner Matt is my own OC and comes from my fics Catching Fire and Guardian Angel.

 _ **Moments**_

" _Look into my eyes, it's where my demons hide. Don't get too close, its dark inside." – Demons by Imagine Dragons._

 **March, 1976**

He's spent two months with the Stevens and Rachel is the closest thing to a best friend he's ever had. She tells the best knock-knock jokes and she's the only one who can find him when they play hide and seek. She's smart and funny and tells him stories of when she used to live with her mom and sister, and he thinks it'd be the coolest if they could be real siblings. He's never had a sister, or at least he's pretty sure he didn't, but she'd be the awesomest.

Except when he gets back to the Stevens' today, there are police cars in the street and Rachel's crying on the step in the arms of their neighbour, Ms. Davies. She's an elderly lady who always smiles when they play in the yard and she didn't even yell that time his ball went into her flowers, but when G waves to her, today she doesn't smile back.

He's somewhere else by that night, with a lady who smells like mint and bubble gum and works at the candy store. He lies in bed that night and wishes that Rachel could be his sister for reals.

(Years later, he'll look into the murder of Maria Stevens. He'll be CIA at the time and when he finds the man responsible he'll repay him eye for an eye in all the ways the government taught him.)

 **June, 1979**

Jason's dead.

It hurts in a way that feels like shards of glass in his chest because Jason had been his friend. He was dead because he'd tried to protect G, and he knows it's all his fault.

Because Jason was nice to him. He stopped the other boys from taking his lunch, and he stopped Mr. Marcos when he tried to hurt him, and they'd sit up at night and think of G names for him. _G-force G-money G-power_ And he thinks he'd give all that back if only he didn't have to feel this way, because what happened to Jason is all his fault.

He sits on the floor at the end of his bed in a group home in Santa Clarita and thinks that if he'd never let Jason be his friend, he wouldn't have to feel this way, because he'd still be alive and none of this would be his fault.

He's Callen the next day, not G, and he doesn't let anyone call him that for a very long time. (Not until 2008 and a former Navy SEAL who won't take no for an answer.) And he never forgets Jason Tedrow.

 **September, 1980**

He's stronger now. He can protect himself. He has to because he won't let anyone else die for him like Jason did. So the next time Mr. McPherson goes for the broom handle, something inside of him _snaps_.

It's the first time he's raised a hand in his own defence, the first time he's thrown a punch to protect someone else, because he can't let him hurt them. Matty with the big blue eyes who still has a family out there and sweet little Karen who still remembers her dad and braids a tattered red ribbon into her hair every day.

So he takes the broom handle out of their foster dad's hands and he beats him with it the same way he'd have hurt Matty and Karen. He attacks him with a ferocity that no ten year old should have, beats him until the broom handle snaps the same way this thing inside of him did, and when it's done he stares at the blood on his hands and feels sick.

But Matty launches himself at him with a desperation that speaks of the innocence he still has, Karen too, and he thinks that he'll take this feeling that turns his stomach as long as they're safe.

He gets sent to juvie for this, never mind the fact that Mr. McPherson would have killed Matty and Karen if he hadn't done what he did, and three weeks later he calls it hell and never speaks of it again. It doesn't matter anyway, he has a family out there somewhere, and they'll come for him eventually. He just has to survive until then.

(Later he'll redefine hell as a Turkish black site and a terrorist's ingenuity, but he'll survive that too because he has no other choice.

And he'll learn how to use that thing inside of him that comes out when the people he cares about are threatened. It'll still make him sick every single time, but it's necessary, and one day he'll even have a name for it.)

 **April, 1984**

He goes to "hell" twice more, even though neither one of which are really his fault. Gets three weeks for shoplifting in May, 'cause Ms. Peters was too drunk to realize there was no food in the house, and a month the next November for possession. It wasn't even really his because he'd taken it off of a foster brother who was getting in too deep with the wrong kind of crowd, but the cops and the judge aren't listening and his attitude doesn't help.

He spends Christmas in this hellhole and tacks on extra time for bad behaviour when he attacks a guard who was trying to bash a ten year olds' head in. And when he gets out in mid-January with ice in his eyes and an edge in his grin, he tells himself he doesn't _care_ because somewhere along the way that belief that his family would come for him has curled up and died.

It leaves a hole in his chest that aches like Jason's death all over again, but he smiles and tells himself it doesn't matter. He has himself to count on, the only one he's ever had, and sometimes he even believes his own lies.

(He doesn't let himself care about anyone for a very long time after that. Not until Matt and the DEA and a traitor that gets his partner killed on his watch, and that leads him through a whole other type of hell.

It takes Hetty Lange and every alphabet agency in the book hunting him half way around the globe to get through that.)

 **July, 1986**

He's sixteen and the foster system hasn't heard from him in at least seven months. It's not the first time he's ran to the streets, he knows parts of LA better than the back of his hand, but it will be the last because he refuses to be CPS's puppet any longer.

He's found a family of sorts, in a messed up kind of way, on these streets but he doesn't know any other kind. They're a ragtag group with more in common with the lost boys than a gang, but they each have no one else in the world but each other.

Together they rule these streets, from Arleta Ave south to Van Nuys and east into Sun Valley. They crash in empty houses and abandoned warehouses, steal what they need, and answer to no one but each other. It's freedom, and a dead end future, and friends that he's just starting to think he can count on.

And for three months it's all good, until it all falls apart on a Friday night in October.

He's ducking through back alleys and side streets on his way back to their temporary haunt of an empty office on Sherman when it happens. He's got two of the younger kids with him, Jace and Michael, and he's pretty sure they've ditched store security from the Walmart four blocks down that they've just raided. It's a pretty good haul, (two jars of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a thing of pop tarts, and a couple handfuls of snickers bars), and the younger brothers with him are laughing and joking and mock wrestling on their way back.

It's then of course that it all goes to hell and Callen thinks sometimes in the minutes that follow that he should have seen this coming, because nothing ever stays good around him. It's the screech of car tires and gunshots and Jace screaming, and the next thing he knows he's tackled them both to the ground, but he's not fast enough, because Jace is crying and Michael's blue shirt is turning red.

It's sometime that night, after everything else, when he finds himself at the South Los Angeles Community Centre. There's blood on his hands and staining the knees of his jeans and this empty, ragged hole in his chest that _aches_ because Michael is dead, and Constance's fingers warm against his arm. He thinks, in some distant corner of his heart, that she might be the only thing holding him together.

Jason's dead, and his family is never coming for him, and Michael's blood is under his fingernails and staining his hands in a way he can't get out, and he can't live this life anymore.

The next day he creates the first real legend of his life, the first of far more than he knows. G. Callen, upstanding citizen, with a fake ID that says he's eighteen and lives in Pasadena and a stolen credit card that gets him half way across the city.

He buries his past and never looks back, and sometimes he even forgets about the hole in his chest and the ghosts of Michael and Jason that haunt the dark corners of his shiny new life.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Wow! That was an incredible episode tonight! I don't want to ruin it for anyone though, so I won't say any more. This chapter took longer than I thought it would and I'm still not really sure of how it turned out, but the retail craziness is setting in again with Black Friday approaching and I figured I'd post it before I lost the chance. Unfortunately I don't know how long it'll be before I get the chance to update again, but I'll try my best not to be too long. Happy Thanksgiving to anyone reading from the US, Riptide.

 **Chapter 2**

" _Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." – Friedrich Nietzsche._

 **May, 1987**

He's seventeen, even though every piece of ID to his name says otherwise, and he's got a crappy little apartment in Venice and a job at the grocer's on the corner and he takes night classes at the community college for psychology and criminal law because he's seen enough of the dark corners of this world to know how it really works. And he's never felt more out of place.

He can watch the drive bys from his bedroom window and see the ocean from the front counter at work and at night he sits in the sand off Santa Monica pier and stares up at the stars. He's never felt so small and he's painfully aware of the fact that his normal sort of life means nothing in the grand scene of things.

He sits in class listening to Prof. Risso for Criminology 102 talk about abuse rates in foster homes and it takes everything in him not to be sick because Jason and Michael and Matty and Karen. They're all just numbers here, in this shiny new life he's scrapped together.

He goes through the motions though and for a couple of months he even starts to believe it. And then the anniversary of Jason's death rolls around.

It's been eight years but he still hasn't gone a day without thinking of the boy that was his _friend_ , the one who had made up G names for him, the kid who had died trying to protect him. He owes him everything, and he owes him more than this because he can't let them be just a number.

Jason. Matty. Karen. Michael. Jace. Rachel. They're the only friends he's ever known, the only family, and he _owes_ them more than just being a statistic.

The next day he walks in to a Navy recruiting office in Pasadena and imagines that somewhere Jason and Michael will understand.

(Hetty Lange watches from the shadows, smiling bittersweet and guilty because he's his mother's son but she has no doubt that Clara never would have wanted this for her boy.)

 **August, 1989**

He's nineteen, even though the military thinks otherwise, (according to his ID he's 21 and was born June of 1968) because he's already been Petty Officer Callen, 3rd Class for over a year now. Naval Base San Diego has become something like a home in a weird sort of way, because it's duty and it's necessary and he can do some kind of good here. And somewhere deep down that need to protect people like no one did for him resonates in a way he can't explain.

He's never questioned himself more though, because he's _not_ really changing anything here, and there are still the Jason's and the Karen's of the world with no one to count on. And he's remade his life twice now for the memory of his former foster brother, but nothing feels like _enough_.

It's Jessica Moire that turns his life on its ear again though. She's beautiful and dangerous and she has all the answers. He's wrapped around her finger, in a web that he won't see until much later, because Jess is as cold as she is enthralling and she's one of the best. She offers him a chance to make a real difference, save lives in a way that few people can, in a way that even the military can't touch.

Two days later Petty Officer Callen disappears into the ether, red tape and redacted security clearance making his military record a thing of the past. Special Agent Callen, CIA takes his place and it settles down in his gut with a belonging he can't deny because it resonates in a way that feels meant to be.

(He'll regret this eventually, in the pit of his CIA days, when _the Ghost_ and the things he's done in the name of freedom and country make him question just what he's become. It chips away at your soul, this kind of darkness, but even then, in the worst corner of this thing they've turned him into, he can't deny that _Agent_ fits like nothing else.)

 **April, 1990**

The first time he kills a man it's a warm day in Southern Italy and they've been hunting down a terrorist for the past two weeks. They've split up to search the lower town, and he's just about ready to call it quits when he gets ambushed by the terrorist they're looking for's muscle.

They fight, and this guy's good he thinks the third time he sees stars, because Callen knows precisely how good he is, but he's still getting his ass kicked. He hits the ground hard, tries to roll away only to get a boot to the ribs for his troubles, and something inside of him _snaps_ the same way it did with his foster dad all those years ago.

Its desperation, and a survival instinct he didn't know he had, and a frightening kind of rage that steals his breath away, and somehow he gets his hands on his gun.

It happens so very quickly that the next thing he knows there's a dead man bleeding out in front of him and then he's down beside him, losing his meagre lunch across the cobblestones because he has blood on his hands all over again and it's piling up in a way he doesn't know how to fix.

It's Jess that finds him, holstering her own gun to pick up his from where it's clattered out of his hands. They've got no time for this and he knows that on some level, but it takes her hand squeezing painfully tight on his shoulder, and a sharp toned _Agent Callen_ to get him moving again.

In the end, it's necessary and he'd had no choice, he'd be dead right now if he hadn't reacted the way he did, but that doesn't fill the hole in his chest or fix the emptiness in his eyes. Somewhere in the darkest corners of his heart, he wonders just what it is that he's becoming here.

There's blood on his hands, undeniable and unforgiving because he'd already had Jason and Michael on his conscience, and this chance to change the world that Jess had promised him has no redemption in the works.

(It's another little piece of his soul, another hole in his chest, and he'll look back years later and think that this is where it all starts. Yuri and the Ghost and this killer the Agency is turning him into. He won't see that until much later though, not until a setup in Syria that he was never supposed to survive and a government hit team burning his life down around him.)

 **September, 1990**

He's been CIA for over a year now, thirteen months, not that anyone's been counting, because it's the Cold War heating up again and terrorists a dime a dozen and a threat around every corner. A year and more aliases than he can count and he's become one of their best assets. There's already a rumour going around, and sometimes they call him the _Ghost_ , a call sign that's starting to stick.

He supposes that of all the things it could have been at least the _Ghost_ has a certain ring to it. It fits better than anything else these days, too, because he looks in the mirror and wonders at whoever this is that's staring back at him. It's funny, he thinks, in a way that he should probably be worried about, but he recognizes his aliases far more than himself.

He's coming back from a drop point on a Wednesday night in mid-September the day his world shifts again. By the time he makes it back to the crappy apartment he's crashing in with Jess and their tech operator, he's got a bundle of nerves lodged in his chest and dread curled sharp and hard in his gut. Something's wrong, he can feel it in his bones, but it makes no sense, because they're on the equivalent of a milk run right now.

He's got his gun in hand when he makes it to the door, and Jess meets him three steps in with a smile that's at odds with the man secured to a chair in the middle of their one room apartment. She's all sharp edges in a way he's failed to see before and an icy kind of detachment in her eyes that makes shivers creep up his spine.

She's as dangerous as she is beautiful, always has been, and she's both tonight, and he doesn't know how to reconcile it with the madness he's just walked in on, because there's a man tied to a chair and Jess's fingers wrapped tight around the wrist of the hand his gun's in, and there's a razor edge in her smile.

He looks down the sights of his gun at this man that Jess has targeted and feels sick all over again, just like an alley in Southern Italy, because he's killed since then, and learned it gets easier with practice, but this is an entirely different monster.

The first time he executes a man he's got Jess curled up against his side, whispering poison in his ear, and her gun snug against his ribs, and this broken, jagged _thing_ clawing its way up in his heart.

Its survival, because he doesn't doubt that whatever he is to her, she'll end him here, in a dingy apartment on the wrong side of Chicago, but he'll never forgive her (or himself) for this, because she's broken him in ways he didn't think possible.

It _aches_ like shards of glass in his chest, because that stupid, gullible kid that joined the CIA to save the world has curled up and died, and he stares in the mirror and sees something far less than human looking back.

(It's the real beginning of the _Ghost_ , of the government sanctioned assassin that'll be unmatched and untouchable. He'll be the CIA's best, the bogeyman of half the world, and he'll do things that will break every moral of the society he set out to protect. He'll sell his soul for the sake of the world he set out to protect.

And he'll hate himself for every single minute of it.)


End file.
